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I. D. Help Needed With Logo on Old Gears

CWC(4)

Cast Iron
Joined
Jan 2, 2017
Location
North Central MA
I know this is probably a long shot but figured it's worth a try. I've had this contraption for quite some time & it looks like it may be a transmission of sorts, maybe even from an early motorcycle. These are a few of the gears that are part of it. There are more parts and an old aluminum split casing to go with it. What I was hoping, was that someone might recognize the crescent shaped logo with the arrow through it on the gears shown.
Thanks in advance for looking.
CWC(4)motorcycle trans 004.jpg
 
Thought I would bump this one time.
Hopefully someone will recognize the logo on the gears.
I have done exhaustive internet searches over the last few years to no avail.
Thanks
 
Try showing pictures of the split casings.
Those might be more identifiable, as more people will have seen an outer reference than would have seen the innards.....

Mike

Thanks Mike, that's probably a good idea. It will probably take a few days to get pics taken but will attempt to do so.
 
Try searching trademark images for moon or arrow.

enginebill,
I've tried just about every conceivable search over a number of years. Crescent moon, crescent moon with arrow, moon with arrow, arrow and the like. I've also found and looked in machinery stamping archives, foundry stamps, company logos, trademarks etc, to no avail.
I've had this "thing" in a box in a corner for 20 years. Time to (hopefully) find out what it is and either throw it out or get it to someone who can use it. I have no idea if it's motorcycle/automotive related or an old washing machine transmission. I'll try and post the casings as Mike suggested, maybe that will help.
Thanks
 
If it is a motorcycle tranny,you will be laughin........I always check old lathes for bike trannys......top finds would be a Indian Powerplus,JD Harley and gear drive Scout trannys,sell for $1000 easy,and a Sturmey Archer LS heavyweight ,sold for $1500,complete with a clutch....And lots of cheaper stuff like 3 speed Albions and BSAs ,fetch around $300.
 
JD Harley

Had a '29 74 CID - most amazingly flimsy cam gear drive you imagine. Bought from neighbor for 5 bucks in 1954, but had to lace up 19" rear wheel to replace 21" clincher just to be able to have a rear tire - quite a project for a 14 year old.

Strange "F" head Harley from the antique days. Deteriorating cork float in carb did not help much
 
Had a '29 74 CID - most amazingly flimsy cam gear drive you imagine.
Strange "F" head Harley from the antique days. Deteriorating cork float in carb did not help much


Being an Indian rider, I would often rile up the Hardly guys by saying Harley stopped making motorcycles in 1929, when they stopped making the "F" head JD.
I like to laugh, but, the Harley guys get SERIOUSLY offended!

I really enjoy early motors and something about exposed valve springs really turns me on!

I have an "F" head REO truck engine that I need to hear running someday.

Mike
 
If it is a motorcycle tranny,you will be laughin........I always check old lathes for bike trannys......top finds would be a Indian Powerplus,JD Harley and gear drive Scout trannys,sell for $1000 easy,and a Sturmey Archer LS heavyweight ,sold for $1500,complete with a clutch....And lots of cheaper stuff like 3 speed Albions and BSAs ,fetch around $300.

I haven't been to any rallies in years, so, don't know current pricing, but, I have all 97 of my Antique Motorcycle Club Journals on e bay right now, dating back to 1980, with very few people even looking at them.

Mike
 
Rustyironism:

I have seen a marked drop in the prices asked for "brass era" antique cars, and also a drop in the number of people who show up at antique engine events. My belief is my generation is the last generator (the baby boomers) to really have an interest in brass era cars or working on antique engines or similar. This may account for the lack of interest in your collection of "Antique Motorcycle Club" journals. People will gawk at an older classic or antique motorcycle but usually that is as far as it gets, younger people are not really stepping up to the plate in large numbers.

Funny story about Indian vs Harley: some 25 years ago or more, my wife and I took a motorcycle ride on a fall Sunday. We were on my 1978 BMW R 100/7 which I have owned since it was new. We were in our leathers, and we stopped at a small cafe in a little town along our way. Pie and coffee were what we were after. As we sat lingering over the pie and coffee, an older man and his wife came walking thru the parking lot. Thru the front window, we could see the oldtimer stopping to really look over the BMW bike. His wife finally dragged him by his elbow into the cafe. He then stopped at our table and asked about the BMW, and said he was a WWII veteran and had ridden some confiscated BMW motorcycles back during his time in the US Army. He said he'd always been a Harley rider until age and other factors forced him to give it up. He said he loved riding motorcycles and missed it badly. We asked him about what he'd ridden, and he spun quite a story for us. Seems he was raised in a little town that no longer exists- it was condemned and flooded when one of the reservoirs for the NYC Delaware Water Supply system was created. He told us that as a teenager, he washed dishes for a man who had a cafe for maybe 50 cents a night. One day, the cafe owner asked this fellow- whose name was Earl- if he was interested in owning a motorcycle to get around the area. Earl said he was. The cafe owner told Earl he had a Harley stashed in his chicken coop, and that it had virtually no miles on it, but the engine was stuck. Seemed the cafe owner's wife had put her foot down and forbid her husband to ride a motorcycle, so he stuck it in the chicken coop. Talk about being hen-pecked ! The Hog had languished in the chicken coop and the engine had set up, tires dry rotted, and chickenshit, dust, straw and assorted other junk was piled onto it.

The cafe owner sold the Harley to Earl for 10 bucks, and agreed Earl could work off the payment. 20 nights of washing dishes did the trick. Earl and his buddies removed the Harley to a local auto repair garage where one of his buddies worked. Earl said they took down the engine, honed the cylinders and fitted new rings. With a good cleaning up and new tires and tubes and going over the bike, it was literally a new bike for Earl. Earl said there was quite some rivalry at the time between the Harley riders vs Indian riders. He said sometimes he'd park his Harley outside a poolroom or store, and an Indian rider would start ragging him about how much better an Indian was. Earl, particularly if there were other riders around to join in the verbal jousting, would try to goad the Indian rider into taking his Harley for a ride. This was a setup that a few un-knowing Indian riders walked right into, to the delight of Earl and the rest of the crew. Harley had a manual spark advance on one handlebar, while Indian had it on the opposite side. The Indian rider would get on Earl's Harley and think they were retarding the spark when, in actuality, they were putting on the choke. Of course, Earl would make sure to have left his Harley with the spark fully advanced. The unsuspecting Indian rider would come down on the kick start and generally got quite a kick-back, sometime launching them up and over the handlebar for trying to start the engine with a fully advanced spark. Earl said he and his pals would split their sides while the Indian rider cursed, moaned in pain, and was told it took smarts to ride a Harley and similar jibes.

Earl wanted to visit with us and talk about motorcycles and riding endlessly, which was fine with my wife and myself. He was a nice old timer and he said I was the first guy in ages who even knew what retarding and advancing the spark was about. Earl's wife kept apologizing to us for her husband keeping us distracted from our pie, coffee, or whatever else we had going on. We assured her we were quite happy to visit with them, but she eventually prevailed, taking Earl by his elbow and tugging him off to another table.

Those were the kinds of "happenings" we used have occur when we'd be out riding. Nothing quite so interesting has happened in years since. At most, someone will see the old BMW and remark about knowing someone who rode one once, or asking what year it is, but no one gets into a discussion about old motorcycles like that fellow Earl did.

I also have a 2005 Harley Davidson Dyna Lowrider. It was a surprise to me, a fee for doing an engineering job. I put about 45,000 miles on it, and then the hype and glitz wore off. It's a comfortable riding machine for me, riding solo, but that is where it ends. Handling on our backroads is not so good as our old Airhead, and my wife finds packing on the back of the Lowrider, even with a good aftermarket seat, to be a problem on anything other than a short local ride. She packed out to Omaha and back on the Hog with me one time and that was it. Of course, the old time Harley riders and mechanics all tell me that an 88 cu inch "Twin Cam" engine (known in some circles as a "fat head") is not a REAL Harley. I've had one very well respected Harley mechanic tell me: "Belts are for holding up your pants, not for the final drive on a motorcycle". He is a die hard for having the final drive made with roller chain. I take it all in stride as I am not one of those rabid Harley fanatics who has H-D logo stuff on everything including underwear and toilet paper. I had to deal with the problems H-D had built into the earlier Twin Cam engines, namely a failure of the camshaft chain drive at about 40-45 K miles. I was proactive, so did not have the actual failure. I wound up with an S & S spur gear drive to replace the chain drive, and a slightly hotter cam and a few other upgrades. I toyed with the idea of changing out the transmission gears from a 5 speed to a 6 speed using Baker gears, but the price was a lot more than I wanted to spend, nor had I any real need of doing that job. Just seemed like an interesting project until I saw the price of the gears. I get on a motorcycle for a road trip and do 600 miles per day, and do it a couple of days in a row with no problems. I figured the 6 speed gearing would lower top end revs a bit on those long trips.


I believe motorcycles are for riding and it's no holds barred- ride them whether the skies are clear or whether rain happens, ride them on good paved roads or dirt/gravel roads, ride them to do errands or go on jobs and load them up with whatever needs to be taken along. I've had Hog riders (more like "insta bikers" or RUBS) tell me I have a dirty Harley and ought to spend time detailing it. I hose it off and ride it when I care to. It's properly maintained and ready, just not something I worship by spending endless amounts of time polishing and primping. I had my fling with the Dyna Lowrider and truth be known, went back to my old Airhead BMW motorcycle almost 100 %. 42 years with the same BMW motorcycle, and it is "original"- the paint and pin striping on the tank are worn and patina'd from my thighs gripping the tank on back road curves, there are numerous stone chips in the paint on the fenders, and there are a few upgrades, but the basic design was excellent and something I am familiar with. We had the transmission pulled down a couple of seasons ago to replace the bearings and re-shim the end clearances. Not bad for almost 85 K miles at the time on the original bearings. Gears looked as good as new, and the clutch disc had 1ittle wear on the friction facing (we replaced the clutch since we had things pulled down that far). BMW built a transmission more like a light truck transmission than a true motorcycle transmission. It shifts with a characteristic "clunk" until a person gets the hang of it. Those old Airhead transmission parts are getting scarce, and a German firm is making aftermarket gears for them. The price is another matter, but if a person is stuck, back against the wall to get a tranny back together and get back on the road, at least there are gears available.
 
"Harley had a manual spark advance on one handlebar, while Indian had it on the opposite side. The Indian rider would get on Earl's Harley and think they were retarding the spark when, in actuality, they were putting on the choke. Of course, Earl would make sure to have left his Harley with the spark fully advanced. The unsuspecting Indian rider would come down on the kick start and generally got quite a kick-back, sometime launching them up and over the handlebar for trying to start the engine with a fully advanced spark."

Good stuff, Joe, as we wait for pictures of the trans case in question.
But.. uh..ahem..Indian had the timer control on the Correct side of the handlebars, and also had a distributer to send the spark to the correct cylinder when it was supposed to, not like Harley, who in 1917 until (? still?)made the coil send a spark to both cylinders at the same time, claiming extra horsepower.
Indian starts every time on three kicks (two choked kicks, one with ignition), where Harley started on the sixth kick, or 106th kick, and with the spark firing on a flooded cylinder on the exhaust stroke, many a leg paid the price!

Good natured poking made the beer go down and I think we all had fun.

Mike
 
Mike:

I think a lot is lacking in today's generations of motorcycle riders. No friendly rivalry, no closely following their marque in races and hill climbs... Add to it the fact that the largest part of today's generations of motorcycle riders do not work on their own machines, nor do they keep their machines for too many seasons.

As an example of the loss of the kind of spirit the older generations of motorcycle riders had, I am reminded of an incident with my buddy and myself while riding. It was a glorious fall Sunday, and we had ridden some back roads in Delaware County, NY- my buddy on his 1975 R 90S BMW, and me on my 1978 R 100/7 BMW. As we were homeward bound around the NYC Pepacton Reservoir, my buddy had the engine on the R 90S quit. We checked for spark and had none, so figured it was likely in the ignition points. I carry a spare set of points, condenser, and spark plugs in the tool tray (under the seat) of my own BMW bike. We both had plenty of tools in our tool rolls. We got busy and confirmed the points had failed. Bosch has quit making the points for these older motorcycles, and the replacements were not so good, having thinner plating on the contact faces. As we worked on my buddy's engine, it seemed like every imaginable type and make of motorcycle was ridden past us. Groups of bikes would pass, riders would wave, and keep on riding with no reduction in speed, let alone stopping to see if we were OK or needed help. My buddy, laying on his side on the ground, got the points installed along with the new condenser and new spark plugs. As we were buttoning things up, the one person to stop was an older man in a pickup truck. He asked us if we needed help, and asked what the problem was. He said he had ridden Airhead BMW bikes a few years back, and knew putting the points in and setting them could be a bit tricky. He asked if we had parts and tools enough, and was willing to stop and help us. We were OK and thanked him and remarked that in all the time we'd been working on my buddy's bike, half the motorcycle riding world seemed to have blown by us without stopping. We agreed that this is the newer generation of riders, and talked of how our generation works on our own machines, rides them and stops to help each other out. That was a good 15 years ago, and I do not suppose things have gotten any better in that regard.

Also about 15 years ago, several of us rode from NYS up into Massachusetts and Vermont. I rode my Harley. Our first stop was the Indian Museum in Springfield, MA. In those days, the museum was still in one building of the original Indian factory, and was the sole province of the late Esta Manthos. Esta was a feisty old lady, probably at least 90 at the time. She had a collection of Indian motorcycles, memorabilia, and Oscar Hedstrom's machinist chest and all sorts of other stuff that seemed to find its way to her museum. She asked us what kind of motorcycles we'd ridden there on. Needless to say, she ripped up up one side and down the other about the fact that two of us had come on Harleys and my buddy was on his R 90S BMW. She was absolutely serious in her contention that the ONLY good motorcycle was a "real" Indian- one built in the Springfield plant. As engineers, aside from riders who worked on our own bikes, we knew a 1950's side valve engine made with the looser manufacturing tolerances of the times was not something to compare to a more modern OHV engine built to tighter tolerances. We kept straight faces and let Esta have her say, as she seemed fully capable of chasing out of her museum if we were crazy enough to disagree. Indian did have a reputation for pulling a lot more out of their side valve engines than H-D, and I think even into the era of H-D building overhead valve engines, was still kicking Harley's ass in competitions.

Some few years ago, my wife and I rode over to Rhinebeck, NY for the Antique Motorcycle meet. Of course, we rode over on our old BMW. At the meet, we came upon Butch Baer, and he told us about riding for the Indian factory in competitions, and about his father, Fritzie Baer- an Indian dealer right in Springfield who worked with the factory. Butch had an Indian 4 cylinder machine and an Indian Chief on display. He invited my wife to sit on his prized Indians, and we took her picture. There is something sharp looking about those old Indians, and the simplicity of a side valve engine does appeal to me. I suppose if I had unlimited money, I'd order a new Indian "Chout" from Kiwi Indian. Kiwi Indian is producing side valve engines and building complete "retro" Indians. The "new" Indians made in the past 20 years are not anything that grabs my imagination.

My own guess as to how things will go in the US motorcycle industry is that H-D will likely be on the ropes within the next 5 years. H-D is trying to survive and now offering small and lighter bikes and offshoring production. H-D, clawing for survival, has closed the relatively new Kansas City plant and with it, discontinued the whole Dyna line (the "real" Dynas with FX series frames) along with the V-Rod line.

I would not be surprised if, in the next 5-10 years, H-D winds up being acquired by Polaris, and at long last, Indian will have gobbled up Harley.

The late George Yarocki- a fellow who loved both Indians and Hendey machine tools- had discussed Indian's metallurgy back in the days they were made in Springfield. Yarocki said Indian tended to make engine parts and gears out of mild steel and relied on surface hardening. These parts did not hold up for too long in hard service. Yarocki's analogy stuck with me. He described a surface-hardened steel part such as a crankpin or gear as "like laying linoleum on a carpeted floor". Yarocki, who lived for Indian motorcycles and was renowned for his skill and knowledge with them, said that back in the days of Springfield Indians, Harley had it over Indian in terms of metallurgy used for the engine and transmission parts. However, Yarocki was a solid Indian man, and had a whole shop devoted to the rebuilding of Indian engines, transmissions, and complete motorcycles. Even when he had to use a scooter chair to get around, George Yarocki accompanied an antique Indian on the cross-country "Cannonball Run", providing mechanical support at each stopping place. Yarocki also volunteered his time at a museum in his hometown of Torrington, CT. At that Museum, Mr. Yarocki demonstrated machine work in a small lineshaft driven shop, running a Hendey tie-bar head lathe. Unfortunately, while intending to get over to Torrington to that museum, I delayed too long. Mr. Yarocki died a few years ago, and the old Indian motorcycle community lost a great friend and resource.
 
Joe,
In fear of taking this thread too far off topic, I tried to send you a PM and your inbox is full.

Three of us rode our Chieves to the Springfield Come Home Rally in '81 and somewhere around here I have the Motorcyclist Post with the front page picture showing us and me holding the Furthest Distance trophy.

Every old timer, either on their porch or on the street, waved at us, as most everybody worked or had a relative who worked for Indian.

Charley Manthos had opened the museum a few years earlier, and, if I remember right, Ethos, his wife, was actually Hedstrom's daughter.


George Yarocki specialized in 101 Scouts, and I was never able to stumble into one.


So much past. So many gone.
The future sure looks different, but, I guess it always has.
Thanks.

Mike
 
OK, here are a few more pictures.
For reference, the main part of the case is about 6 1/2" by 9 1/2". There are no fasteners with this anymore, but the threaded holes to assemble cases are 1/4-20 and where the smaller covers (missing) go, the threaded holes are 10-24. I don't know how to measure the gears, but have included another photo to show the gear teeth. It looks like there are accommodations on the outside of the casing(s) for clutch/shift lever or cable assembly. There is also what appears to be a clutch pack in the photo of the gears (on L), that is about 2 1/2" in diameter.
Thanks Rex, I'll have to look them up.
Thanks for all the looks, comments and stories, I appreciate any insight.
CWC(4)

motorcycle trans 002.jpgmotorcycle trans 001.jpgdrill press and motorcycle transmission 016.jpgdrill press and motorcycle transmission 017.jpgdrill press and motorcycle transmission 014.jpg
 
I haven't a clue, but a friend suggested some early "pre-unit" bikes used Burman gearboxes and Burman was producing in India for a while. Maybe something along those lines. He thought the stamping looked vaguely familiar, but couldn't place it. My Google-fu is too weak.
 








 
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